Tony's suit slid off in a mechanical blur of concentric hoops as he strode confidently forward, the individual parts stowed neatly beneath the walkway in carefully molded compartments. Jane and the others—after a mad scramble to gather up all the tablets that were far too light to withstand the blustering wind—followed him, though Simmons lingered behind for a moment, analytic eyes taking in each detail of Stark's facility.
Skye turned and yelled, "Jemma, come on! It's freezing up here and there's a full bar inside!"
Simmons trotted up, a sad smile tugging at her lips. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "It's just...Fitz was such a fan of Mr. Stark's engineering feats...I thought I might be able to give him some new details when he...if he..."
"When he wakes up," Skye slid one arm around Jemma's slumped shoulders, "I bet Jane here can get Stark to make a bedside visit in full armor," she winked at Jane, who smiled back.
"I'll try," she promised, though it was hard to think of a future when she still had no idea how to fix their present.
Inside, Tony and Loki were warily circling each other around the bar where a row of whiskey glasses were already waiting for the bottle Stark fished from under the counter. He poured a sloppy series of drinks and nudged one in Loki's direction.
"Clearly you know my weakness for pretty girls," he joked, though there was a darkness behind his eyes that robbed his flippant words of any mirth, "But you know I'm with Pepper, so you better not think about trying anything."
"With no offense intended to the charms of Miss Potts," Loki's eyes narrowed and he flashed a toothy grin, "if I wanted you in my bed, Stark, you'd be there. I do not deny the idea has its appeal." A beat, and then he shook his head. "But I too have someone to care for, so you need not be concerned. In any case, I think the need for a disguise has run its course; surely Midgard has more to worry about now than one alleged war criminal."
With a flourishing gesture of one elegant hand, Loki's exterior melted, transformed, grew. Within seconds he was the tall, lanky figure Jane remembered. He kept his more casual clothing however, only adding his customary black and green leather jacket over top. Skye and Simmons shrank backwards at the display—awed against their will—but Morse merely raised a brow and regarded Loki with shallow frown.
Tony's eyes caught Jane's for an instant, and she knew what the glance meant. She swallowed and tried to avoid the implications of being "cared for" by a man who had once tortured her...and her friends. It was so odd to be caught between the impulse to beg for forgiveness and shout that it didn't matter that Loki cared for her because she cared for him too.
In the end, she did neither. She tossed her tablets onto the counter, grabbed the nearest tumbler and took a large swallow of whiskey, choking down the fiery cough until her eyes watered. Clearly the exposure to Aesir alcohol had done nothing to improve her tolerance.
Tony relented at the sight of her gasping like a fish, and chuckled. It shattered the awkward tension that filled the room with yawning silence.
"So it's that kind of day, huh?" he took a swallow in sympathy, and grimaced, "Well," Tony began, handing around the glasses to the rest of the group, "should I take this visit to mean the shit has well and truly hit the fan?"
"More or less," Jane croaked, "We probably have hours, if that, before the elves pick up my trail and head this way. So I'll have to look at all the research you've done and give you a run down of what we know."
"Yeah, these elves," he replied, "they came out of nowhere, huh? Are they here because of the holes popping up around the planet like Swiss cheese?"
"Actually, no," she admitted. "They're here because—and I didn't mean to do this, I swear," it seemed a very important point to make. Jane squirmed under what felt like the entire world's judgmental gaze before admitting, "Because I kind of stole the source of their power. And now I can't get rid of it. Or give it back. Because then they'd use it to destroy the entire universe."
Tony's eyebrow arched incredulously. "Why would elves wanna do that? Aren't they all into preserving and protecting nature? Using their power to turn every planet into the Jungle Book, I'd understand. But destroy it? My man Tolkien was way off base."
"These are dark elves, and as little like the arboreal sprites of Tolkien's work as a candle is from the sun." Loki put it. "For them, the negation of light and creation is not a thing to fear. The Aesir fought them over centuries to ensure their goals would never come to fruition. Unfortunately, Jane's act of thievery was rather ill-timed. The Convergence will give the elves the perfect opportunity to send the power of the Aether through the connections in the universe and destroy everything."
Jane drank the rest of her whiskey. Its soothing warmth made her feel marginally better about being the probable cause of the world's destruction. Again. But only marginally.
She had to stop herself from reaching for the bottle.
"Huh," Tony said. A pause. "What I got from all that was...you've read The Lord of the Rings? Man. No wonder you were so easy to beat."
Loki's hand tightened, and Jane heard the icy warning tinkle of glass starting to give way. "It would have been better for your pathetic species if I had succeeded, Stark. My presence on Earth would have been a warning to all other Realms that Midgard had at least one worthy being to protect it."
"Okay, enough," Morse said, even before Jane could interrupt. Her lips had drawn even tighter, but her eyes were the same—leveled, deadly, and calm. One hand rested gently on a pair of batons slung across her belt. "We can argue blame later. We're on a clock; Jane, you need to get whatever intel you need so we can move on."
"Right," she said, "Tony, I know you were doing a lot of research into tracking where these holes in space-time were appearing, right?"
"Yeah, we've been able to detect them, but only after they appear, not before," he said, still not looking away from Loki. His face had gone grim in a way Jane only remembered from their nightmare captivity in the research lab of the Tower.
She prompted him again, gently, "Have you been able to detect any kind of pattern? We spent weeks analyzing the same data on Asgard, and couldn't find a way to predict where the holes were going to occur."
"No," he looked away at last, "we put that on the back burner when none of the algorithms we'd worked out seemed to be coming up with a solution. I left Jarvis running some though...hey, buddy?"
"Yes, Mr. Stark," the cool mechanical voice of the AI piped over the speakers, "However, despite running several hundred different analyses, the results are still inconclusive. Perhaps integrating Miss Foster's data gathered off-world will yield a new perspective?"
"Good idea," Tony replied. "We should go down to the lab and start downloading your stuff."
"Simmons, go with them," Morse put in. "Skye, you and I will stay up here and set up the comms. I want to know exactly what's going on in DC and how soon we should be ready to pack up and get out of here."
The two other agents nodded; Simmons grabbed the stack of data pads off the counter. Morse went on.
"Nobody get comfy," she said, forestalling Skye's wistful look at the row of bottles lined up beneath the bar, "we'll probably have to bug out in a hurry. Jane, let us know the minute you've got what you need. They don't have the resources in DC to hold out very long."
"Of course," she nodded. Every second they spent here, bantering over drinks, was another second some innocent could be hurt...or worse. Jane swallowed hard and tamped down on the acid churning in her stomach. All her fault, this was all her fault. "Lab still in the basement?"
"Nah," Tony shook his head, "I moved everything except the generators and servers out from underground. Didn't feel like doing my research buried alive anymore. Lab's just three floors down." He gestured Jane to lead on.
Loki ignored the not-so-subtle dig at their shared history and swooped around to Jane's other side, taking hold of her elbow. She nearly jumped at the unexpected contact; ever since their fight in Loki's torture chamber on Asgard and her subsequent infection with the Aether, he had been very wary of touching her without warning or invitation.
This is normal, she reminded herself, reminded the Aether, This is okay.
The Aether didn't back down; the most capable, alert guard dog in the galaxy, it knew her too well to believe such feeble lies.
We don't need to be afraid of Loki, she told it. Although if he didn't wipe that grin off his face, she might just give her symbiont free rein to singe his grasping fingers.
Stuffed into the elevator, the four of them exchanged awkward glances. Simmons, carrying tablets stacked up to her chin, glanced at them all with eyes that seemed to grow bigger by the second. Tony and Loki were having their usual, ongoing dick-measuring contest. Jane thought they might be on round seventy-two by now. And she was just doing her best to keep from either throwing Loki's hand off her arm or leaning into it.
How perverse was it that she was almost wishing the other two were gone so she could burrow under Loki's arm and imagine he could protect her from...everything? From the elves, from her own guilt, from the enormous, blackening storm-cloud on the unknown horizon ahead that loomed larger with every step?
Her breath was coming faster, matching the frantic beats of a heart that couldn't seem to slow. You're fine, Jane, she thought, again and again. Everything's going to be fine.
Liar.
Loki's hand drifted from her elbow down to the small of her back. He looked down at her and nodded, imperceptibly. At the firm pressure of his fingers, Jane sighed softly and pressed back against him. The simple touch told her that he wasn't going to leave, wasn't going to abandon her.
Whatever happened, they would face it together.
The wordless reassurance was enough to give Jane a fragment of control and confidence. The panic and fear receded.
As they stepped into the lab, Tony took the lead. Loki dropped behind Jane as she hurried after Stark towards the huge array of screens at the back of the room.
"These tablets can't connect to any Earth tech," she said, "How are we going to integrate the data?"
"Can you set it to scroll automatically?" At Jane's nod, Tony went on, "Then just set them up on one of the tables, set them all going, and Jarvis can use the room cameras to scan everything manually."
Between the three of them—Loki was busy swiping through some files on his own—they set all sixteen pads on one of the lab benches directly beneath a row of recessed cameras in the ceiling. Jane blessed Tony's paranoia; Jarvis assured them that the cameras were fast enough to record all the data at the tablets' fastest speed. Jane watched the numbers, charts, photos, and tables of all her research scroll across the computer screens at a dizzying rate.
"So much for that," Tony said, keeping one eye on the computer screens and manually adding some new folders to his database with the other. "But predicting where these holes are gonna appear is only part of the problem."
"Right," Jane agreed. "The way I see it, we've got to do three things," she ticked them off on her fingers, "First, we have to have an accurate idea of when the wormholes appear, and when. Second, we need to have a way of stopping them the instant they appear."
"Your friend Selvig has that part nearly figured out," Tony interrupted. "I threw most of my muscle behind him when the predictive mapping didn't pan out. He's been developing these tripod-like things that isolate the wormholes and either redirect them or shut them down entirely."
"I had no idea he was so far along," for the first time in a while, Jane smiled, "If he's got that part of the problem figured out, then we're halfway home!"
"Yeah," Tony agreed, a bit grim, "Selvig saw the Convergence coming long before anyone else did...it just sucks that no one really believed him. Even I had trouble with it until we got reports of the first few disappearances."
"What do you mean, no one believed him?"
"Well, he wasn't really in a good mental place, was he? All that running around Stonehenge in the buff, carrying giant metal spikes and lecturing tourists about voids in space-time."
"What?" Jane cried. "I know I was kind of off the radar in Hawaii, but no one told me about any of this!"
"Yeah, I only heard it when his assistant called me up and asked for some help in getting him out of the institution they put him in. I admit, when he first started theorizing about the universe going porous," Tony was pulling up Erik's research as he spoke, carefully avoiding Jane's eyes, "I thought it sounded pretty cracked.
"But what the hell, right? I helped spring him and set him up in one of my London offices, and when he turned out to be right about the whole thing, I helped pitch his solution to SHIELD. They've been manufacturing this wormhole sealers for months."
"This is..." she trailed off, shaking her head. Her friend, her mentor, had been going quietly mad, and she hadn't been told. Erik hadn't called her.
Were things between them as broken as that? Had he really trusted her so little not to ask for her help, her belief?
She had to know, painful as the truth would be. Pale and weak, she murmured, "He didn't trust me, did he? After everything with Loki...he didn't want my help."
Simmons did her the courtesy of pretending not to hear. Tony did her the mercy of not agreeing immediately. "Loki put him through the wringer," he shrugged, "He was trying to stay away from anything that reminded him of being controlled."
"Me," the smothering weight of guilt on Jane's shoulders was back-breaking. She swallowed hard, again and again, but her throat was swollen with tears that refused to be choked down. "I reminded him."
"Well, you were there," Tony shrugged, "and even though you helped get Loki out of his head...it's hard to go to someone for help when they've seen you in your weakest moments. Trust me, I know. Try not to take it so hard."
"Sure," she said, trying for a nonchalant shrug. What she really wanted to do was retreat between her shoulders like a turtle into its shell.
Don't take it so hard that Erik didn't want to see you. Don't take it so hard that he was suffering and wouldn't ask for your help. Don't take it so hard that you're poison, ruining everything and everyone that you touch.
Sure. She could do that.
Tony looked miserable, but Jane forestalled his attempts to soothe her guilt. She wanted, she needed, to feel it.
"So how applicable are Erik's devices to large-scale implementation?" the words spilled out, though Jane hardly knew what she was saying, "How do they work?"
"Take a look," he replied, scooting to one side so Jane could go through the notes on the screen. She scanned quickly, latching onto the few pertinent pieces that jived with her own understanding of the wormholes, and blew out a breath.
Even half-crazy, doubted by everyone around him, Erik Selvig was a scientific genius. Somehow, even with the limited scanning devices he managed to cobble together without funds, Erik had found the perfect frequency to negate the particles the portals gave off. If those particles destabilized, the wormhole would disintegrate. The whole effect took only a few milliseconds; as close to instantaneous as they were likely to get without the advanced technologies of Asgard.
"This is amazing," Jane sighed. "Did he do all this...?"
"He had the theory down before the institution, yeah. He was trying to do his first field test at Stonehenge—where he was certain a portal was going to manifest—when they caught him. All he did at my lab was refine what he already knew."
"That is hardly a surprise."
This time Jane did jump. Loki was standing behind them, gazing at the information on the screen as though he'd been there all along.
"Yeah?" Tony said, "It was news to the rest of us."
"That is because you have little firsthand experience with the Tesseract," Loki was neither hostile nor gloating; merely relaying facts. "There is a power inside it which manifests in increased intuition, a greater access to the powers of the mind. Even freed from its influence, the Tesseract's mental enhancements persist for a time. It is no surprise either that Selvig discovered this ingenious solution...or that he has gone mad for it."
"He's not crazy," Jane shot back. It was very, very important—vital, essential—that Erik was not insane. If he were...Loki was to blame, Jane was at fault, and nothing could ever be right again.
Loki looked down on her, face blank and still. "By some definitions he is, Jane. Anyone who has had the Tesseract within them is. It is pure thought, a maelstrom of raw information...it offers a different and dynamic way of seeing the world. Though Selvig's primary goal while possessed of the Tesseract was to figure a way to achieve my goals, that does not mean the information he was exposed to was limited to only that. He had many, many other thoughts in his mind. Suppressed they were, by my command...but that command is gone."
"So he's being overwhelmed by all the other things he saw?" Tony put in, roughly. "Fan-freaking-tastic. Your legacy just gets better and better."
"Would you rather I had kept him under my control?"
"I would rather," he growled, "you had kept your stupid pointy nose out of our business! None of this would have happened if it weren't for you and your daddy issues!"
"Stop it!" Simmons' voice cut through their burgeoning argument with a discordant squeak, "W—we don't have time for this. If we have any hope of saving the world, we need to work together."
Somehow, the sight of the scientist's ghastly, drawn face helped Jane get the whip hand over her own racing heart. "You're right, Jemma," she said, more firmly than she felt.
"Erik's solution seems workable," she said, downloading the data from Tony's computer onto a spare USB stuck in her pocket, "The last thing we need is a power source. Deploying these things across the entire world for an indeterminate amount of time won't be possible without something to keep them running. And we don't have the Tesseract anymore. I doubt Odin will let us borrow it, either."
"That's my job," Tony put in, "I've been toying around with arc reactor tech, these past few years, trying to come up with a power solution for developing countries. Right now, I've got fifteen arc plants running, plus all the miniaturized ones I use for my own tech. All that's at your service."
"Will that be enough?" her brow furrowed. Considering the size of the Earth, fifteen reactors hardly seemed more than a drop in the bucket.
"Probably n—"
A squawk from Simmons' wristwatch cut him off. After a brief spat of static, Skye's voice came through.
"Simmons, Jane, do you copy?"
"Copy, Skye," Jemma replied, "Status?"
"The elves have broken through the defenses in DC and have started heading for New York. Given their observed speed, Coulson says we have less than a half-hour to get out safely. Thor is trying to stall them en route, along with some of the surviving SHIELD air forces, but Coulson wants us out ASAP. Do we have a destination?"
Simmons shook her head, but Jane knew their next step, uncomfortable as it would be.
"Tony, is Erik still in your London lab?"
"Yeah, 26th floor of the Shard. He said he was gonna keep running local field tests. I left him there with his assistant and a medical team; they checked in just this morning," he hesitated, "Are you sure going to see him's the best idea? He won't be too thrilled to see him."
"It's our only choice," Jane would rather do anything than face Erik at the moment—even facing the elves seemed easier—but she couldn't put the whole world at risk for her emotional convenience. Or Erik's either. "Your lab will have all your research, and Erik may be the only one that can help Loki and I figure out the pattern to these portals. Without that, none of this will mean anything."
"So you're on portals and prevention, I'm on power," he said, "Hear that, Jarvis?"
"Yes, sir," the AI replied, "I will double our efforts on all fronts. However, may I suggest that Miss Foster and her team depart immediately? New satellite data reports that the elves' ships are using some sort of slipstream travel to increase their velocity. I estimate their arrival in fifteen minutes."
"Prep the suit," Tony ordered, "I'll meet them over the ocean; see if I can't keep them away from the city for a while. Do we have any data on Thor?"
"I track him as following the elves; some ten minutes behind."
"Then that's ten minutes we need to hold them. The Mark 7 up for that?"
"Power packs are charged and ready, sir."
Jemma gave a muffled moan of distress. Her face had gone paler, if such a thing were possible, and her dark eyes were huge and sunken in her face.
"We're going right now," Jane reached across the lab bench to take her hand; the gesture reminded her of their time together in the Tesseract bunker, with the Skrull clawing through concrete to reach them. "It'll be okay."
"Stick with Jane and she'll get you through," Tony reassured her, "She hasn't let the world fall apart yet."
"Thanks," she managed a weak chuckle, "I do my best. "
()()()
London was gray, overcast, and muggy. Loki set them down on the banks of the Thames, its waters as stormy is the iron-cast clouds above them. A group of pigeons angrily ruffled their feathers as Skye tripped over them on their landing, but otherwise, their sudden appearance made no stir. The city seethed around them, horns honking, brakes squealing...the simple, everyday noises of a hulking metropolis getting on with its day.
No explosions. No weird ships descending from the sky.
Small favors.
"Couldn't you have put us down a bit closer?" Agent Morse brushed her long hair out of her eyes and squinted at the Shard, glinting above them in the distance.
"Surely you have no objection to a short walk?" Loki snapped. The effort of teleporting their group so soon and so far had clearly taken its toll.
"In any case, did you not order me," he sneered at the word, "to make our appearance inconspicuous? Short of veiling you all in an invisibility spell—a difficult trick for one, let alone five—finding a deserted area was the only alternative. Be grateful I was able to get us this close...this city is far too crowded."
Morse's fingers tightened on her ever-ready batons. Loki squared off to meet her combative stance.
Jane stepped between them. "This is fine," she said. "The longer we stand here arguing about it, the less time we'll have to get any work done. So let's get going."
She hitched her backpack—stuffed with her precious tablets—up her shoulders, laced her fingers with Loki's, and pulled him along the riverside walkway. She didn't turn back; only the scuffle of footsteps behind her told them that the three agents were following.
"You needn't fear, Jane," Loki said, after a few moments' silence. "I have no intention of harming anyone who seeks to help you. If I can keep my temper with Stark," he spat, "surely I can keep it with any SHIELD lackey."
"I know," she said, squeezing his hand. The back of her neck prickled. Somehow she knew Agent Morse was watching her every move, storing everything up to report back to Coulson. Jane raised her chin and refused to let go. Coulson could think what he wanted.
"I trust you," she said. "But every argument sets us back. The elves can probably already tell we're gone. It's up to Tony and Thor to keep them from following us right away...and who knows," her breath came short and she paused. It took a minute of silent, focused breathing to go on again. "Who knows how long they can hold them?"
Loki lifted their intertwined hands to his lips, and kissed her there. His lips were warm. "No harm will come to you, Jane," he vowed, solemn and sure, "I swear it."
"I know," her courage failed then; she would have liked to return the kiss. "But I'm not just worried about me. Even you can't stop me from being afraid for my friends...and the rest of the world."
He had no reply for that. But he did not let go of her hand, not once during their journey from the river to the Shard. It was the only thing that gave Jane the strength to stand up under the whispers, the shrieks, the fleeing panic of the people who, along the way, recognized Loki for who he had been to the world a mere eighteen months before.
Jane couldn't blame them for their terror. She only wished they knew that now, despite everything, he was one of the few who stood between Midgard and its annihilation.
Once he had bamboozled the guards into letting them up to Tony's labs on the 26th floor, Jane took her first full breath and slumped against the wall of the elevator. Everyone else seemed to wilt as well.
"You might have glamoured yourself, or something," Morse grumbled. "I expected those police outside would try to arrest you."
"I only wish they had," he smirked, "It would have been an entertaining diversion."
Skye chuckled. Morse scoffed. Simmons gave a faint sigh.
Jane swallowed a laugh, but the gleam in Loki's eye told her he saw it nonetheless. His own smile grew wider. She rolled her eyes at him, and let her own grin bloom.
He was right. It would have been funny.
What was happening to her?
The elevator slowed, stopped, and dinged cheerfully, letting them out into a beautifully-furnished reception area decorated with glittering crystal models of all Stark Industries' recent developments in the clean energy arena. Power plants, factories, rapid-transit models...all—as the framed newspaper articles on the wall indicated—powered with non-polluting arc reactor technology.
The receptionist behind the huge wooden desk didn't exactly match the clean, modern surroundings. She was bundled against the frigid air-conditioning in layers of bulky, patterned knits. Her dark brown hair tumbled messily down her back, stuffed under a beanie crowned with a huge pink pom-pom. Her feet were thrown haphazardly over the arm of a huge leather office chair, clad in pink-and-yellow striped socks. And she didn't bother looking up as their odd party shuffled into the room; too absorbed playing Candy Crush.
Jane stopped dead, a sudden bubble of laughter swelling up so fast in her stomach that she had the momentary sensation of buoyancy. For an instant, she was half afraid she was going to explode.
"Um, excuse me?" Jemma was determined to be polite.
"Hang on a sec," the girl replied. Her fingers swiped a few more times before she put the phone down. "Just wanted to save. What can I do for...holy shit. Jane?"
Jane burst. She laughed so hard tears streamed down her face and she buckled, knees hitting the polished marble floors with a resounding crack. Then Darcy was kneeling in front of her, saying something she couldn't hear.
Then they were hugging, and Jane's nose was itchy from being pressed against Darcy's brown fringed sweater, and she could smell the vanilla body wash she used, and they might have been eating pop tarts over printouts in New Mexico.
For a moment, everything was all right.
And then nothing was.
"Jane?"
She looked up.
Erik had aged ten years since she'd last seen him. His face was crumpled like a used napkin, pale and slack. His hair was lank and matted, falling in front of his eyes in tangles. His clothes were stained with coffee and crumbs. Passing him on the street, Jane might not have recognized him as the man she once knew as nearly a father to her.
Only his eyes were the same. But they burned with a passion and intensity that was unnerving to see.
Jane scrambled up, followed quickly by Darcy. Her intern threw one sympathetic glance backwards, then moved to Erik's side.
"Hey, you're out," she teased him gently. "You ready for breakfast, yet? I got some of those weird sausages you like. Or we can order some pastries from Lang. They have those lemon puffs you like."
Erik hardly seemed to hear her.
"Jane," the word was flat and uninviting.
She swallowed. "It—it's good to see you, Erik," she managed. "You look—"
"Get out."
()()()
Hello, all! I'm baaaack! And it's great to be here. Here's hoping my months of absence haven't driven you away from this story. Please, please, pretty please tell me what you think...I'm a little nervous posting again after so long.
Also, if you haven't checked out my other work, I wrote quite a few Lokane one-shots (including my first ever smut fic, wow) a few months back. And if you want your chance to win a one-shot of your own, follow me on Tumblr at nofearofwaves. I do fic giveaways with every follower milestone, so...good luck!